Dragon Keepers #1: The Dragon in the Sock Drawer (10 page)

The professor's response was immediate and emphatic: “NO!”

And then the screen went blank.

Jesse slammed his fists on the table. “This guy is really beginning to bug me,” he said.

“At least that irritating grinding sound didn't happen this time,” said Daisy. “But we still have to find Emmy on our own.”

CHAPTER TEN

DRAGON IN A HAYSTACK

Uncle Joe was waiting for them when they came downstairs the next morning.

“I don't suppose you two happened to hear the phone ringing at six o'clock this morning?” Uncle Joe asked.

Daisy and Jesse looked at each other blankly and shook their heads.

“I guess we slept through it,” said Daisy.

“Well, it was your buddy, St. George—”

“He is
not
our buddy,” Daisy said. “We
hate
him!”

“I will grant you that he won't win any personality awards,” said Uncle Joe, “but ‘hate' is an awfully strong word. In any case, he wanted to know whether his lizard had shown up during the night. I don't suppose you'd tell me if it had.” He eyed them both with suspicion.

“She hasn't,” said Daisy.

Uncle Joe turned to Jesse with a raised eyebrow.

“No, Uncle Joe,” Jesse said. “Honest! We haven't seen her!”

He gave them a last searching look. “I don't know what you guys are up to, and I don't want to know. But I think it's best if there is no gallivanting around for either of you for twenty-four hours.”

Jesse's shoulders sagged. Their plan had been to search the neighborhood to see if Emmy was masking as somebody's pet or maybe even a wild bunny or a squirrel or a raccoon. How were they supposed to look for the masked Emmy if they weren't free to do a little gallivanting?

“Yes, Poppy,” said Daisy sadly.

“I've got work to do,” said Uncle Joe. “We made a mess yesterday searching for that lizard. I want you to go through every room in this house and put it back into apple-pie order. You two guys with the program?”

“We're with the program,” Jesse and Daisy replied sulkily.

Uncle Joe stomped out the back door to the Rock Shop.

Jesse stared at the screen door. It was the first time since he had come to stay that he had seen Uncle Joe this angry. It was sort of scary.

“Don't worry,” said Daisy. “After a while, he kind of forgets what he was mad about. He never stays mad.”

Jesse studied Daisy's face and wondered whether she actually believed that this time.

The cousins dragged themselves through the house, room by room, putting everything back into apple-pie order. The exercise also gave them the opportunity to see whether, in spite of what the professor had said, Emmy was masking somewhere nearby. After a while, Jesse felt foolish shaking couch cushions and tapping bookends, calling out to Emmy to show herself.

Jesse had just finished straightening their bathroom and was about to make his bed when he happened to look out the window. The million-dollar car was, once again, idling at the curb. The driver's-side window was open and St. George was sitting at the wheel, watching their house.

Jesse fell to his knees and crawled through the bathroom into Daisy's room. “He's out there!” he said in a loud whisper, though he knew there was no need to keep his voice down. It wasn't as if St. George could
hear
them.

Daisy's ears turned deep pink. “Should I tell Poppy?”

“What good would that do?” said Jesse. “It's not like he's trespassing on our property or anything. He's just…
spying.
”

“Boy,” said Daisy, narrowing her eyes. “If my mom was here, she'd march right out there and tell him off but good!”

“Yeah!” said Jesse, imagining it. When Aunt Maggie told people off, they never forgot it. “Where is she when we need her?”

Daisy had gone back to fluffing pillows. Jesse joined her. “Paris, France,” she said absently.

“That's it!”
said Jesse.

“That's what?” asked Daisy.

“That's where she is!” said Jesse.

Daisy stopped fluffing and gave him a weird look. “Emmy's in Paris, France?”

“No! Remember the other day when Emmy was in the Dell and she was crying for her mama and everything? For some reason, she seems to think her mother is there. And that's where she is. She isn't masking! She's gone to find her mother, like everybody does when they're scared!”

Daisy's face brightened up by a few watts. “You think?”

“I
know,
Daze! Let's go!” He ran to the door and stopped. “Oh, right. We can't go. We're grounded. And even if we could go, it's probably not such a hot idea anyway, if
you-know-who
is spying on us out front. What if he followed us?” Jesse shuddered at the thought of St. George invading the Dell.

Daisy tucked her hair behind her ears, completely unfazed. “He can't see us in the backyard if he's sitting out front. It's perfectly safe to go back to the Dell. And Poppy wouldn't even count it as gallivanting. The Dell is practically our second home!”

Daisy snagged another bottle of Tums off the kitchen shelf on their way out. “Just in case she's hungry,” she explained with a wide grin.

“Or has acid indigestion,” said Jesse, grinning back. Now that they were back on track, their spirits were rising.

They slipped out the back, careful not to let the screen door slam behind them. They went down the steps, dropped to all fours, and started crawling across the backyard on their elbows, commando-style.

The Dell might be home turf as far as they were concerned, but they did not want to test their opinion in the court of Uncle Joe.

They crawled past the Rock Shop's window. Then they got up and ran in a crouching position, dodging from shrub to shrub, until they had made it to the top of the rise and the laurel patch. There they dived into the bushes and crawled through them at double time. Just when their knees started giving out, they came to the end of the tunnel and stood up.

Jesse and Daisy scanned the Dell. But there was no sign of Emmy.

“She's in the barn,” said Jesse with a good deal more confidence than he felt.

They ran down the hill toward the barn, cut across the Heifer Yard, and threw themselves against the barn's heavy sliding door. Then they dragged it open. Jesse blinked the sunlight out of his eyes and peered into the shadows of the barn. There was no sign of Emmy here, either, but Jesse noticed something right away: the Sorcerer's Sphere was missing!

Daisy noticed, too, because she turned to Jesse and asked, “Did you hide it somewhere?”

Jesse shook his head. “She must have it.”

“What makes you so sure?” Daisy asked.

Jesse lifted up his face and sniffed. He cocked his thumb toward the ceiling. “She's up there,” he said, “in the hayloft.”

The ladder to the hayloft was in a far corner of the barn. It was spattered with pigeon poop and one of its rungs was a little loose and creaky, but Jesse and Daisy clambered up. The higher they climbed, the stronger the smell of hot chili peppers. The ladder rose through a square hole in the hayloft floor. Jesse entered the hayloft first, followed quickly by Daisy.

Emmy was sitting on the Magical Milking Stool in the center of the loft. Since they had last seen her, she had grown to the size of an adult chimpanzee. She was holding the Sorcerer's Sphere between her shiny green talons.

“Jesse and Daisy!”

“Emmy!” They ran to her and threw their arms around her. There was more than enough of her now for both of them to hug at the same time. Emmy tilted her head from side to side and nuzzled each of them.

Suddenly they heard the sound of a car motor revving, growing louder by the second. Jesse ran to a wall and peered through a wide chink in the barn siding.

In a great cloud of dust, the big black million-dollar car was coming down the lane. This was exactly like the dream Jesse had had when he fell asleep in the Heifer Yard!

“It's him!” Jesse said. “He's coming!”

“The Deep Woods!” said Daisy. “Let's make a run for it!”

Jesse's face felt glued to the chink in the barn wall. “We'll never make it,” he said.

“Bad man come!” Emmy whimpered.

“She sounds a lot less like a baby now, don't you think, Jess?” Daisy said.

Jesse turned back to Daisy. There was no time to think about what Emmy sounded like. “We need to do something, Daze!” he said, his voice rising in panic.

“We can't just stand here and let him find her,” said Daisy, her hands flapping. “We have to hide her!”

But where?
The two of them looked around the hayloft. In all their years of playing hide-and-seek, they had never bothered much with the hayloft. Hiding there would be like hiding in a football field. Then Jesse's eyes fell upon the solution.

The farmer had left behind some bales of hay. The hay had been sitting up in the dry heat of the hayloft for so long that it had practically turned to dust, but it would have to do.

Daisy was already by the hay, hands on hips, checking out the bales. “What do you think?” she said.

“It's our only choice,” said Jesse.

Just outside, they heard the squeal of brakes, then the slamming of car doors.

“Emmy, give me the sphere,” Jesse said. Reluctantly, Emmy handed it to him. Jesse forced it into his back pocket. “Emmy, follow me,” he said. He led her over to the bales. The string holding the bales together was so old, it broke easily. “Emmy, stand here. Stand very still. We're going to be throwing hay on top of you, and you just have to let us. It's the only way to hide you from the bad man.”

Jesse and Daisy dug in and started throwing armloads of loose hay on top of Emmy. Emmy sputtered. “Not like! Itchy!”

“Sorry, Emmy!” Jesse said. “It's the only way!”

“Emmy hide self,” she said. She curled up so that she became a glittering green beach ball with two dark stripes.

“Do you think she's masking?” Jesse asked as they continued to bury her in hay.

“I think she's just curling up into a ball because she's terrified,” said Daisy. “Can you blame her?”

They heard voices from below: St. George's, low and sweet, and someone else's. It was Uncle Joe's! It sounded as if they were arguing.

Jesse and Daisy sped up the hay-flinging. By now, Emmy was completely buried in a mound of hay that rose up higher than the cousins' heads. At last, Jesse and Daisy stopped heaving hay. They looked at each other and nodded, panting and covered in hay dust. This would have to do. They dusted each other off quickly. Then Jesse and Daisy settled themselves into the side of the mountain of hay and waited.

Jesse slowed his breathing down and tried to look calm and comfortable, but his heart was hammering and little bits of straw were poking him through his clothing. Emmy was right: the hay
was
itchy. The Sorcerer's Sphere felt like the world's biggest boil on his bottom.

Daisy grabbed his hand as they heard the loose rung creak beneath someone's weight. Under them, beneath the hay, Jesse felt Emmy breathing in and out, in and out, very fast.

Uncle Joe popped up through the hole in the hayloft floor. “Hey there!” he called, then chuckled. “Pun intended,” he added. He climbed into the loft. “You guys are gallivanting around when I told you not to,” he said, waggling his finger at them. “But I had a hunch you'd count the barn as home turf, and I was right! I'm afraid I've brought you a little company. Your favorite herpetopterist is here,” he finished with a wink.

Then St. George's big head poked up through the hole and the rest of him followed, black as a hearse in a dust storm. His eyeglasses flashed in the loft's semidarkness as he paced about, the tails of his coat trailing across the wooden planks. He stopped suddenly and whirled upon them.

“You
thieves
!” he said.

Jesse felt Daisy tense up beside him, but Jesse was tired of St. George's accusations. “We are not! She's not your lizard,” he said. “And we're sick of hearing you say that. She's ours, and you're the one who stole her from us.”

“Really?” said Uncle Joe, sounding somewhat surprised.

“Really!” said Daisy.

“Then you
do
have her!” said St. George. “Of course you do! You've had her all along!”

Uncle Joe's eyebrows went up.

“We do
not,
” said Daisy quickly.

“She's not here,” Jesse said, feeling bolder by the second. “She's not here because you scared her away. You scared her away because you're a bad,
bad
man.”

Without taking his eyes off the cousins, St. George said to Uncle Joe, “Your children are rather adept storytellers.” His eyes, behind the round disks of his glasses, looked empty.

Uncle Joe looked from Daisy and Jesse to St. George. He didn't know who to believe.

“I have an idea,” said St. George with a bland smile. “Let's produce the lizard, and then we'll resolve the issue of its ownership.”

“That sounds fair to me,” said Uncle Joe.

“Poppy!” Daisy protested.

St. George stalked around the loft, peering into the dark corners. Then he backed up and stumbled over the Magic Milking Stool. “Get this thing out of my way!” he growled. He picked it up and flung it carelessly aside. Jesse watched the milking stool go sailing high into the air and marveled at St. George's strength as the stool crashed clean through the side of the barn and out into the Heifer Yard.